Still resonating a half-century later.

• Author: Krebsbach, Fred
• Position: Armed Forces

"[During the Vietnam War] we literally lived in the mud, in mud holes, in rotted jungle swamps. Our clothes were rotted; our feet were rotted; we had lost all sense of smell; and we could not take our boots off anymore because our feet would swell up and we would not be able to get them back on."

THE "GI JOE" comic strip--depicting a couple of World War II grunts in a combat situation living in a foxhole--hit home with us in Vietnam. It also dealt with their other buddies and then-lives, like what their girlfriends (aka "Jodie") were doing back home and family events, especially holiday festivities. It seemed like war and combat were repeating themselves: ironic, poignant, and reminiscent of WWII.

The worst thing about being away from home for me was hearing about someone dying. There was a delay between the time it happened and when I would get word that a family friend, a neighbor, someone's wife or husband, had died--or even worse, when I heard of the death of a young person killed in a car or farm accident.

I would just as soon have not known about any of it, but it was news from home, so I did not have a choice. My mother--you gotta love her--would write to me about who died and which old "Jodie" was getting married. I never asked her why she did this--maybe it was her way of having something to say. She would go on and on about who died, how he or she died, and how that person looked: "Oh my, she looked so nice in her coffin. They did such a nice job on her; she had on a nice dress; you could hardly tell she was sick; and she was so young" or "He looked so good, so handsome in his coffin. Oh my, and he still had a full head of hair; he had on a nice suit; they did such a nice job on him you couldn't tell that there was anything wrong with him or that he had been run over by a tractor and wagon; and he wasn't that old, either."

There were "Oh so many people in church and the flowers were just beautiful; the choir sang the best ever; and his wife or her husband or the family was taking it so hard ... and the food, oh my, we had so much food and was it ever good. Rosina Durban made her best ever salad and the desserts, oh my, all the neighbor ladies must have brought one."

There I was, GI Joe sitting in his foxhole reading a letter from his mother about death and dying, scratching my head wondering why I was hearing this.

The best ones would be when she would write to tell me about old girlfriends ... that "Jodie" was getting married and...